A Stranger at the Door (A Rachel Marin Thriller)

by Jason Pinter

  “That high schooler could break you over his knee,” Serrano said. “I’m going to need to see some identification.”

  “By all means,” the man said. He took out his wallet, removed a business card, and handed it to Serrano.

  Serrano kept an eye on Ruddock and scanned the card. It was plain white with black lettering. It read, simply:

  Bennett Brice

  YourLife

  For a Better Life

  There was no phone number or email.

  “I’m going to need your contact information,” Serrano said.

  “I’m afraid you don’t have the right to ask me for that,” Brice said. “As I pointed out, no crime has been committed here, though I’m sure Mr. Ruddock’s parents and legal counsel may claim you violated his rights with that vicious and unprovoked assault. I have no doubt, as an officer of the law with all the resources afforded you, you can find out everything you wish to know about me via legal means. But you cannot demand that I provide you with it. And if you press, I have lawyers who would make the devil himself piss his pants.”

  Serrano laughed. “You’re a piece of work, Brice. And you’re right. I’m going to know everything about you before you’ve had your morning coffee.”

  “I assure you, Detective, any efforts to discredit me will be a complete waste of your time.”

  “Yeah . . . let’s just say after this little Children of the Corn performance, I think I trust your assurances as far as I can throw this stadium.”

  Brice laughed dismissively. “Have a good night, Detective. If you contact me for any reason other than to apologize for your abhorrent behavior tonight, you’ll be hearing from my attorneys.” Then Brice addressed the boys. “I’m afraid we will have to end tonight prematurely due to the authorities. As usual, overstepping their bounds and trampling on our freedoms. I look forward to seeing you all again soon. Have a good night, gentlemen.”

  Brice walked off the field.

  The rest of the boys eyed Serrano warily, then began to depart. Benjamin Ruddock had gotten to his knees. His eyes were red and watery. He spat at Serrano’s feet, got up, and walked away.

  Serrano offered Darren Reznick his hand. Reznick looked at it, shook his head, and got to his feet.

  “No need to thank me,” Serrano said sarcastically. Reznick had been a hair away from having his rotator cuff ripped to shreds, but a cop having to save his shoulder from permanent damage had likely bruised his ego worse than his joints. Reznick walked off without giving Serrano as much as a second glance.

  Then Serrano saw Eric standing to the side of the pitcher’s mound. He was holding back tears, his face twisted into a look of pure hatred and shame that made Serrano’s blood run cold. He could see anger, confusion, and worst of all, humiliation. But not at the hands of Bennett Brice. At the hands of John Serrano. Eric knew Serrano was there to follow him. And that Eric’s own mother had sent a cop to spy on her son.

  Before Serrano could say anything, Eric Marin ran off into the darkness.

  CHAPTER 19

  Rachel stared at her cell phone. It was nine o’clock in the morning. Both children had already left for school. Megan had woken up her usual cheery self. She was almost finished with the first draft of a new Sadie Scout book. She wanted Rachel and Eric to read it and critique it (i.e., tell her how much they loved it) when they got home. Rachel told her there was nothing in the world she would rather do, and she meant it. And her brother would read it when he got the chance, she said—school has just been so busy—but she knew the hesitation in her voice would let Megan know her brother would not be diving into Sadie’s adventures anytime soon.

  “That’s OK,” Megan said. “I don’t care if he reads it or not. I still love him.”

  The first part, Rachel knew, was not true. The second, she knew, was. But it broke her heart that Megan couldn’t have both.

  Rachel had not slept. She’d seen Eric climb back through his window at 3:13 a.m. She’d gone to his door, hand ready to knock, but realized she did not know what to say. Should she be angry that he’d left? Thankful that he hadn’t been hurt? Both? In the end, she’d decided to let him sleep, though she lay awake staring at the ceiling, wondering what kind of mother she had become. Since her husband’s murder, Rachel had dedicated her life to controlling and protecting her family in every conceivable aspect. But when it came to the most important part of her life, her children, she felt like she was failing.

  Eric had left for school without saying a word. Rachel’s “I love you; let’s talk when we get home” went ignored. She watched him go, a lump climbing her throat. She went back into her house and sat at the dining room table, not remembering the last time she’d felt so alone.

  Megan’s new Sadie Scout pages sat on the dining room table, next to the case file on the Matthew Linklater murder. One set of pages had sprung from the boundless imagination of her daughter. The other contained nearly unimaginable horrors. Rachel felt like this had become her life: wonder adjacent to evil.

  She had begun to page through the Linklater file when she received a text from John Serrano.

  We need to talk. About Eric and last night. Come to the precinct at 10am.

  Rachel took a quick shower before throwing on a pair of jeans, a white T-shirt, and a lightweight leather jacket. She then drove to the police station, showed her ID to the desk officer, and headed to the detective bureau. Detectives Serrano and Tally were sitting at their respective cubicles. They were having a conversation but stopped when they saw Rachel.

  “Oh, don’t you dare do that,” Rachel said.

  “Do what?” Serrano said, looking puzzled.

  “That thing where you’re talking about someone behind their back but then see them and pretend you weren’t. Spit it out.”

  Tally replied, “Rachel, we weren’t talking about you.”

  “Bull,” she said. “I would never lay a finger on you, Detective Tally, but I will choke my so-called boyfriend out quicker than you can blow out a match if you don’t start talking.”

  Serrano looked at his partner. She shrugged.

  Tally said, “We were talking about how last night Claire tried to have the talk—you know, the sex talk—with Penny, and Penny bolted from the room so fast you’d think she’d joined the track team, then spent the rest of the night blasting music so loud I’m pretty sure they could feel the bass in Beijing.”

  “But, you know, keep on assuming we were talking about you,” Serrano said.

  Rachel felt her cheeks flush.

  “I’m sorry. It’s been a morning.”

  “I’ll bet,” Serrano said. “Last night was a night.”

  Rachel said, “What happened at Voss Field, John? What happened to my son?”

  Tally pulled a chair over for Rachel and said, “Sit.”

  She did. “OK. Now talk.”

  Serrano said, “Does the name Bennett Brice mean anything to you?”

  Rachel shook her head. “No. Should it?”

  Tally opened up a tab on her computer. On the screen was a professional-looking photograph of a man in his early forties with silvery hair and an attractive, easy smile. He wore a sharp gray suit, and his gleaming white teeth were either expensive veneers or had never been sullied by a drop of coffee or puff of tobacco.

  Rachel said, “Who is he?”

  “Bennett Brice. President and CEO of a company called YourLife. He lives in a seven-bedroom, six-bathroom house in a gated community on Randolph Lane that he purchased for seven-point-two million dollars five years ago.”

  “Well, good for him. What does that have to do with my son?”

  “Last night, at Voss Field,” Serrano said, “there were nineteen young men. All high schoolers. Some are current students at Ashby High—I recognized them from the assembly following Matthew Linklater’s death, but some I’m guessing attend nearby schools as well.”

  “OK,” Rachel said. “And?”

  Serrano said, “Eric was there because he’d been recruit
ed by Benjamin Ruddock.”

  “Recruited? For what?”

  Tally replied, “YourLife is, for lack of a better term, a legal Ponzi scheme. There are companies like it all over the country. They sell everything you could possibly imagine. People at the top, like Brice, recruit others to work as ‘captains.’ They then recruit teams to work below them. Think about it like Girl Scout cookies, only instead of cookies, they’re selling top-of-the-line kitchen ranges, stereo equipment, even cars. One person can have as many as a dozen ‘teams’ under them, and for every product the team sells, the person at the top gets a cut.”

  “Sounds like the mob,” Rachel said.

  “If the mob sold fifty-inch plasmas and laundry detergent, then yes,” Serrano said. “The idea is that the person at the top fronts the money to purchase the goods. The captains take a cut of the markup, then pass the rest up top. Brice buys his products wholesale. All those teams sell them at retail, or even a little less, since they don’t have to deal with distribution or warehousing. And that red meat profit between the wholesale and retail is split between the teams and the people at the top. Like Brice.”

  “OK, I get the business model. But why was my son there last night?”

  “Presumably, Eric was one of the young men recruited to join one of Brice’s teams. To work for YourLife.”

  “That cannot be legal,” Rachel said.

  Tally replied, “Unfortunately, as long as the goods being sold have been purchased legally, and Brice obeys child labor laws and pays taxes, he’s not breaking any laws.”

  “But Eric was there in the middle of the night,” Rachel said.

  Serrano nodded. “Also not illegal. Sketchy? Sure. But Eric didn’t appear to be coerced or threatened into being there. No money exchanged hands. Brice didn’t even formally make an offer for any of the boys to work for him. It was more of a sales pitch.”

  “Did it work?” Rachel said.

  “Benjamin Ruddock showed off a watch that looked like it cost more than my car,” Serrano said. “If I’m a stupid young kid, I’d pull my intestines out through my mouth to get to have one of those.”

  “Stupid young kids?” Rachel said.

  “Bad choice of words,” Serrano said. “Impressionable. Malleable. Vulnerable. Brice said if the kids want in, their training starts today.”

  “And Benjamin Ruddock was there too,” she said. “Why?”

  “Ruddock seems to be Brice’s link to the kids. Brice can’t recruit in the schools himself, so he gets guys like Ruddock to recruit for him.”

  “It’s likely that Brice has kids like Ruddock recruiting in other local schools as well,” Tally said.

  “You’re telling me,” Rachel said, “that the kid who’s a person of interest in Matthew Linklater’s murder is recruiting my son to join some shady business venture?”

  Serrano nodded.

  “Did he see you last night? Did he know you were following him?”

  Serrano nodded. “I had no choice. Two of the kids started to mix it up, and one of them could have been seriously hurt. I had to stop it before it got bad.”

  Rachel said, “You just told me this asshole Brice was on the up-and-up. Now you’re telling me there was violence last night?”

  Serrano said, “Brice wasn’t personally involved in the altercation. It was between another boy and Benjamin Ruddock.”

  “This same Benjamin Ruddock who might be involved in the murder of his own teacher and also recruited my son into this . . . cult.”

  Serrano nodded. “The same one.”

  “Well, this is a fantastic start to my day. Thank you, Detectives. I don’t care if it’s not five o’clock here yet. I need a drink.”

  “Rachel, you need to talk to your son,” Tally said. “We were able to use the photos Detective Serrano took last night to identify some of the other boys who were there. Most of these kids come from troubled homes. They’ve either been suspended or have warnings in their student files, and a few have even had social services step in due to suspected physical or emotional abuse.”

  “What are you saying, Detective?” Rachel said, her eyes narrowing.

  Serrano said, “Brice preys on troubled kids. Kids who are susceptible. Kids he can manipulate. Kids looking for an outlet. They’re very specific about who they’ve targeted and why they’re only targeting young men. There’s a reason they went after Eric. We both know the trauma he’s experienced.”

  “You’re saying Bennett Brice exploits young kids like my son because they’re . . . unhappy?”

  “Not necessarily unhappy. Vulnerable. More susceptible to emotional manipulation,” Tally said.

  Rachel thought about what Evie Boggs had said.

  I’m the good cop in this story. You don’t want to meet the bad cops.

  Eric hadn’t been recruited by Ruddock and Brice just because he was vulnerable. He was recruited to keep Rachel in line.

  Rachel stood up. “I appreciate you doing me a favor last night,” she said to Serrano. She turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Serrano asked. Rachel said nothing. “Don’t even think about it. As far as we know, he hasn’t broken any laws. We’re working on this, Rachel. Don’t get in the way. You’re not a cop.”

  “I’m not going as a cop,” Rachel said. “I’m going to see Bennett Brice as a mother.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Eric Marin got off the bus with a swarm of confusion and anger clouding his mind. He hated that his mother had sent her cop boyfriend to watch him, like some puppy who couldn’t be trusted off his leash. He couldn’t shake the image of John Serrano walking out of the darkness, holding up his badge. When Eric’s eyes had met Serrano’s, they’d exchanged a knowing look; they both knew why Serrano was there.

  He thought about what Bennett Brice had said. Opportunity. Opportunity had never presented itself to Eric Marin. It evaporated the day he found his father butchered on their doorstep. So why shouldn’t he see what Brice and Benjamin Ruddock had to offer? It wasn’t even about the watch. It was about pride. Eric couldn’t remember the last time he’d truly felt like he’d accomplished something. If his mother could be so proud of those stupid little books his sister wrote, Eric would give her something else to be proud of, whether she approved or not.

  Then he saw Penny Wallace, and the anger dissipated like steam.

  Her dark hair was tied up in a topknot, and she wore a crisp white-collared shirt over a black skirt. She was talking to Amanda Dubuque, and they were laughing about something. Then Penny saw Eric, and her smile widened. He could read her lips as she said to Amanda, “Catch you later.” She wanted to talk to him.

  Penny walked over to Eric with a quickness in her step that made his heart feel like it might burst from his chest and go skipping across the parking lot.

  A thousand words raced through his head as she approached. Things he wanted to say. Things he desperately wanted to avoid saying. And when she stopped in front of him, the only thing that came out of his mouth, thankfully, was, “Hey, Penny.”

  “Hey, Eric.” She examined his eyes. “You look like you haven’t slept in a decade.”

  “Long night,” he said.

  “I know. I was up super late studying for Ms. Jenkins’s algebra quiz. You too?”

  “Yeah. Up late studying.”

  “Well, aren’t we talkative this morning?” she said.

  He heard a tapping sound, looked down, and saw her tapping the heel of one shoe with the toe of another. Was she . . . nervous? Were those same thoughts and feelings speeding through her mind as they were his, a locomotive of unsaid words tumbling through Penny’s head like a double-decker bus going ninety down a steep hill?

  “Her quizzes are no joke,” Penny said. “I don’t think she got the memo that quizzes and tests are not the same thing.”

  “I know, right?”

  “Right.”

  Penny laughed. It was nervous but genuine. He knew Penny was averaging an A minus in algebra (Eric was holdi
ng a steady B plus). Penny wasn’t one to sing her own praises, but whenever Eric’s family had dinner with the Wallaces, every time there was a lull in the conversation, Claire would boast about the accolades her daughter was racking up. Her mom probably thought that college admissions offices were listening in, Penny joked, but given what Eric knew about his own mother, he wondered if Penny might be serious.

  “What time did you go to sleep?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Eleven? Midnight? What about you?”

  “Twelve thirty.”

  “Wow. That’s late.”

  Eric remembered checking his cell phone when he got home from Voss Field. It read 3:13 a.m. He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours and had completely forgotten that they even had an algebra quiz today. He’d read the material and was reasonably sure he could wing it.

  “How are your mom and sis?” Penny asked.

  “They’re OK. Megan is writing these little books. Adventure stories. About a kid named Sadie Scout who solves mysteries and jumps over crocodiles.”

  “Your kid sister is writing books?” she said. “That’s so cool. We can’t get Elyse to read anything longer than a tweet.”

  Eric laughed. “I read a couple of her books. They’re OK, I guess.”

  Penny gave a sly smile. “You’re her brother. Saying they’re ‘OK’ probably means they’re awesome. She should try to get them published. You and your mom are, like, geniuses. I bet you could help her.”

  “I doubt it,” he said. “Maybe I’m not as smart as you think.”

  “Don’t put yourself down,” Penny said, the lightness leaving her voice. “You’re better than that.”

  “Am I?”

  She paused, then said, “Are you OK? You don’t return my texts, and now you’re acting like if you say more than two words, you’re going to get expelled.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eric said. “My head . . . it’s just overstuffed right now.”

  “Like a mushroom,” she said with a smile.

  “Like a mushroom,” he replied.

  “I have an idea,” Penny said. “We have Ms. Jenkins’s final exam coming up. I’m fuzzy on chapters thirteen to sixteen. We can go over them together. Unless, you know, you’re fully prepped for it.”